A woman killed in apparent murder-suicide in Riverside that was blamed on her husband has been identified as a Santa Ana College faculty member.
Kesha Hondo, 39, was a speech communication professor at SAC, which she joined in 2005 after teaching stints at Goldenwest, Orange Coast and Long Beach City colleges and Cal State Long Beach.
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Someone called Riverside police after finding the bodies of Hondo and her 51-year-old husband Andamo Hondo Wednesday evening
in an upstairs room of their two-story residence in the upscale La Sierra
neighborhood.
Police say the husband suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The wife's injuries were not disclosed, but Andamo Hondo is suspected of having caused them. No one else was home when the couple perished, according to police.
Anyone with information that can help investigators is asked to call Det. Ron Sanfilippo at (951) 905-2912.
Police did not indicate whether the couple had children. Kesha Hondo was formerly known as Kesha Curtis.
Her SAC staff bio page mentions a special connection she had with Santa Ana:
Kesha's grandparents relocated from New Orleans to Santa
Ana in the late 1940's to raise their three children in an environment
rich in opportunity, thus she feels especially proud to serve a
community that has contributed so much to the growth and development of
her ancestral history.
She earned her M.A. in speech communication
and master's in communication studies from Cal State Long Beach. She was also a certified mediator, trained
as a neutral third party participant to assist disputing parties
resolve conflicts in juvenile, family, and civil issues.
“When I teach
communication,” she said in her staff bio, “I reinforce to myself who I am and how valuable my
relationships with others are in my own life.”
Professor Hondo's friends, students and co-workers have been leaving comments honoring her at the Southwest Riverside Network News site. One indicates flowers can be sent to Brown Mortuary at 204 W. 17th St., Santa Ana. Places to donate in the victim's name lieu of flowers is apparently being set up at Santa Ana College.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.